It’s not just that it’s shockingly distasteful, it’s the sheer callousness of it that renders one almost speechless with disbelief.What’s wrong with these people?

Then there’s the group of lads in their late teens who thought it funny to spit at Janice Morris as she sat alone on a park bench, before later pelting her with flour and eggs.

When police — who class her as vulnerable and with mental health issues — visited her Suffolk home later that day, they found her still covered in flour and with “smudged mascara down her face”.

AFP

More than 70 people died as Grenfell Tower in West London went up in flames in June 2017[/caption]

One of the gang — 18-year-old Cohan Semple — saw fit to take a photo of the attack and posted it on Snapchat.

One recipient reposted it to Facebook, it went viral and, quite rightly, prompted widespread revulsion and a police investigation.

All five have pleaded guilty to using threatening behaviour which caused harassment, alarm or distress and await sentencing.

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Yobs pose for a Snapchat picture after pelting a homeless woman with flour and eggs[/caption]

Meanwhile, it seems “dozens” of the Remembrance Day “Silent Silhouette” statues placed all over the country have been defaced or smashed up by mindless vandals. In Devon alone, one statue was snapped in half, another five vandalised and one stolen.

Oh how we wish that, if caught in the act, their punishment could be a few weeks on the frontline of a war zone. But don’t hold your breath.

Schoolkid sleuths expose ‘child refugee’ as man, 30

A “CHILD” refugee is under investigation by the Home Office after his fellow pupils at an Ipswich school posted a pic online with the caption: “How’s there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?”

Achoolchildren in Ipswich discovered their ‘child refugee’ classmate was actually a 30-year-old beer-swigging man – it should have been the authorities doing the checksFacebook

Their suspicions were aroused after finding a Facebook profile in the same name with photos of a man swigging beer while sporting a thick moustache and chest hair. A simple check that took just a few seconds and should have been made by the authorities before they placed him at the school.

It seems wily teenagers aren’t anything like as daft as their supposed superiors.

Ironing out our differences

IRONING is the nation’s top simple pleasure, followed by folding towels and pairing socks.

The nation clearly needs to get out more.

In the dog house

WHILE his estranged wife Lisa Armstrong was in court for the initial hearing of their divorce, Ant McPartlin was strolling in a park with new love Anne-Marie Corbett and Labrador Hurley.

In photos, the canoodling couple appear to be on their own, but in yesterday’s Sun it was reported that, at one stage, “an aide handed Ant a poo bag”. In the interests of clarity, one should perhaps point out the bag was for the dog, not Ant himself. But I digress.

Ant McPartlin has an aide for handing him poo bags apparently – poo bags for the dog that is, not himselfGetty Images – Getty

The aide’s role reminds me of the old joke about the circus worker whose job it was to clean up prolific amounts of elephant dung.

When asked whether he’d ever considered another line of work, he replied: “What – and give up showbiz?”

Top Gun

THIS photo of Tom Cruise reprising his role as Maverick for the Top Gun sequel suggests he hasn’t aged at all in the intervening 30-plus years.

Tom Cruise on Top Gun in 1986 and the ageless A-lister on the sequel 30 years laterKobal Collection – Shutterstock

Or perhaps it’s simply the wonderfully flattering gravitational pull of a high-speed motorbike.

We all wanna be Spices

YOU know you’re famous when your No1 fan is Adele.

When she appeared on James Corden’s Carpool karaoke, she was word-perfect on the Spice Girls single Wannabe and said she dreamed of being Ginger Spice.

For Adele’s now thirty-something generation, you can’t overestimate the effect of the Spice Girls when they burst on to the pop scene in 1996 with Wannabe.

Yes, the “girl power” mantra was a bit cheesy but the point is that for a while they defined the zeitgeist of social change for girls who saw these feisty, opinionated young women having fun primarily on their own terms – and aspired to do the same.

They’ve all had their trials and tribulations in the ensuing years . . . but haven’t we all?

Most of all, the Spice Girls are a mirror of the enduring power of female friendship, with all its twists, turns, complexities, bickering, sniping (mostly Mel B and Victoria – who, by the way, are currently speaking) and, ultimately, longevity.